What if the very thing delaying our hope is not God’s timing… but where we have placed our faith?

This message explores spiritual discernment, chosen blindness, and the importance of anchoring our hope fully in Christ. Nina also shares a song the Lord placed on her heart earlier this week called “Rise Up,” a reminder that God is still calling His daughters to lift their eyes and walk boldly in His purpose.

If you have ever felt discouraged, disappointed, or uncertain about your next step, this episode will gently remind you where your true hope is found.

✝️ Scripture referenced:

Proverbs 13:12

Matthew 13:15

2 Corinthians 10:5

📩 Connect with Nina: ninapajonas@gmail.com

Instagram & Facebook: @borntobeabutterfly

🦋 If this episode blesses you, please share it with someone who may need this encouragement.

Healing is holy.

Transformation is possible.

The Lord can turn your wounds into wings.

You were born to be a butterfly.

Recently the Lord gave me a phrase that I cannot stop thinking about.

Misplaced faith leads to deferred hope.

And when I heard that,

when that message settled into my spirit,

I realized that a lot of the disappointment that we feel in life doesn't come from God not showing up.

It comes from placing our hope in the wrong places.

Welcome to Born to be a Butterfly,

where we embrace healing and growth in Christ to experience true transformation.

My name is Nina Pajonis and I pray that today's message ministers to you.

Hear me clearly when I say I'm not saying that we can't have hope for other people,

but we cannot place our hope completely in them.

We all fall short of the glory of God.

Inevitably,

if we put our hope in people,

we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

They will not get it right every time.

Nobody can.

What I'm saying is that we cannot rely on people as the source of our hope.

We cannot place our hopes and dreams into the hearts or hands of people because sometimes unintentionally,

they can crush them.

Sometimes intentionally,

they won't hold them. Well,

sometimes people can feel threatened by your dreams.

Sometimes they are jealous,

sometimes they are just careless.

And sometimes they simply do not care as much as you thought they did.

And that is where the Lord gave me another word,

another phrase,

chosen blindness.

Sometimes when we keep placing our hope and trust in people who keep disappointing us,

we are refusing to see them for who they really are.

It's actually a form of self sabotage,

but we call it something else.

We call it betrayal.

We say,

they did this to me.

They didn't help me,

they didn't support me,

they didn't love me.

But God is standing there saying,

I support you,

I love you,

I give you hope and faith.

But you are choosing to place them in the wrong things and the wrong people.

If we love the Lord more than anyone else,

then what he wants must be of the highest priority.

What he says must hold more weight than what anyone else says.

It is his confirmation that we want his authority.

His yes,

it is faith in him that gives us renewed and sustained hope every single day.

Because we know he cannot lie.

If he put a promise on your heart,

it will come to pass.

The only one who can remove that promise is you.

The only one who can remove that promise is me.

We can affect our divine destiny by placing our faith in the wrong people and in the wrong things.

If we are not obedient to God,

if we do not listen when he speaks,

we can delay the promise.

I don't know about You.

But God speaks to me often through what people would call coincidence.

But I don't call them that.

I call them God incidents.

Sometimes he'll give me a word and suddenly I'll start seeing it everywhere.

In fact, he did it with me this week.

Everywhere I went,

everything I did and everything I watched,

I kept being confronted by the same word.

And that word was rise.

All this week he has been revealing what he wants me to see.

He has been confirming what he is calling me to do.

But if I refuse to see those confirmations,

if I refuse to acknowledge the signs he is placing in front of me,

then I am choosing blindness.

Sometimes we say,

I'm not sure what God wants me to do.

I need more confirmation.

And instead of admitting fear,

we say, God hasn't spoken yet.

We blame our hesitation or not arriving at our destination on him or on others.

I'm guilty of it too.

We all are.

Sometimes it feels safer not to try at all.

Sometimes it feels safer not to try.

Sometimes we think to ourselves,

if I never try,

I'll never fail.

But we forget something important.

God does not call the equipped.

He equips the called.

The assignment was never meant to be done. Without him,

we do not have the strength on our own.

We do not have the gifts on our own.

We do not have have the fortitude or the faith on our own.

But through the Lord,

we can do anything.

But a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

And I believe this is exactly what what the Lord wanted to tell me.

And he wanted to tell me so that I could tell you.

Hope becomes deferred when we do not surrender fully to Jesus,

our living hope.

Hope also becomes deferred when we place it in others rather than in Him.

The dreams and desires the Lord has placed on our hearts become muddied in someone else's hands,

or we may never fulfill them because we listened to someone else rather than the Lord.

Proverbs says hope deferred makes the heart sick.

So what are we doing when we are deferring hope because we're making hope bad choices?

Proverbs says that hope deferred makes the heart sick.

And yet everything that we do for the Lord comes from our hearts.

So if I'm giving my hope to the wrong things or to the wrong people,

or even to a. A wrong place,

if my hope is in those things and my hope keeps getting dashed time and time and time again, what is that going to do to my heart?

What is that going to do to your heart?

As I was creating this podcast episode,

I was struck with inspiration in my car for something that the Lord wanted me to say.

And what I'll do in those circumstances is I'll pull out my phone, I'll start a voice memo, and I'll record what it is that the Lord is telling me.

This way I don't forget it.

Anyway,

that's what I was doing. And as I'm driving,

I'm driving through the neighborhood where I live,

and there were two little kids on the sidewalk, and they were blowing bubbles,

and the bubbles were floating in front of my car,

and I smiled.

And just as I smiled,

I heard the Lord tell me that deferred hope was like somebody bursting your bubble.

Imagine you get all excited about something.

You're looking forward to something.

You got a great word from God about something he wants you to do or who he's calling you to be.

And you share it with someone who doesn't have your faith,

or you share it with someone who says,

but I want that.

Or you share it with somebody who just doesn't have the emotional or spiritual capacity to hold it.

What happens?

The bubble bursts.

You're not as excited.

Maybe you start to doubt yourself.

Maybe you doubt that you heard from the Lord.

Maybe you start questioning whether you deserve it or you're equipped for it,

or even if you're worthy to receive,

might seem so far out of your comfort zone that you couldn't imagine a world where you could accomplish the assignment that the Lord has given you.

I get it. I've been there.

I'm still there.

I'm working on things right now that I keep throwing my hands up in the air about.

I keep praying to the Lord, saying,

I don't know how I'm going to do this.

I need your help.

You got to guide me. You got to show me what you want. You got to show me exactly how to do this,

because I'm scared,

because I've never done it before.

But all of that is natural.

All of that is normal.

When we're doing new things, when we're living a new life unto the Lord, we're going to be called into places,

into spaces, into assignments that never in a million years would we have imagined for ourselves.

And guess what?

That's exactly how it's supposed to be.

We're always supposed to do things we would never do.

When we're walking with the Lord,

we're always supposed to be more than we ever thought we could be.

When we're walking with the Lord.

He promises us exceedingly and abundantly more than we could ever ask, think, or imagine.

So why?

Why are we so surprised when that is exactly what he tries to deliver?

We might be surprised,

but he isn't.

He knew about these plans that he had for your life way before you were ever born.

He knew the purpose he had for you. He knew the plan he had for your life.

And everything,

both good and bad,

is utilized to bring it to completion.

This is the lesson that the Lord has been teaching me.

Hope is only found in Him.

It is not in people.

It is not in circumstances,

not in promises that don't align with action.

Hope is not something I extract from another human being.

God can use other people to encourage us,

yes,

but they are not the source.

When we place our hope in people who consistently disappoint us,

something begins to happen inside of us.

Disappointment turns into resentment.

Resentment begins to burn in the soul.

It clouds our vision.

It taints our spirit.

Then we are no longer clean vessels.

We begin focusing on what they did instead of focusing on who Christ is.

And that is when we have taken our eyes off the Lord.

I have had moments where God has clearly said to me,

let them go.

Sometimes it's an inner knowing.

Sometimes it's. It's a gentle but firm question.

How many times must you go through this before you believe what you see?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I learned that early in my journey.

And yet we do it all the time in relationships.

We keep reopening the same wound and asking God to heal it while refusing to walk away from the one who keeps wounding us.

Why?

Why do we do that?

Do we feel like we deserve it?

Are we codependent on people instead of dependent on Christ?

Are we using people as crutches instead of leaning fully on the Lord?

There is a difference between praying for someone and placing your hope in them.

You can love someone from afar.

You can pray for their eyes to open.

You can entrust them to God.

But you do not have to keep entrusting them with your heart.

You do not have to keep giving your heart to someone who has shown that they cannot hold it.

Christ is our living hope.

Some people do have strong character. Their walk matches their talk.

And those people are blessings in the body of Christ.

But even they are not our source.

Christ is.

When I was praying the other night, I said,

lord,

let every eye see.

Let every ear hear.

Let every heart come to know you and clearly in the Spirit. I heard him saying,

there are some who don't want to see.

It wasn't a question,

it was a statement.

And I stopped mid prayer as his truth resonated within me.

Of course,

he was right.

There are those who don't want to see.

Some don't want to see him because if they truly saw the the Lord, they would have to surrender.

Some don't want to see themselves honestly because if they did,

they would have to change.

Some don't want to see the harm they cause others because acknowledging it would require repentance.

Sometimes blindness is not the inability to see.

Sometimes it's the refusal to see.

For this people's heart has become calloused.

They hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts,

and turn.

And I would heal them.

When the Lord brought me to this Scripture,

a realization hit me.

I finally understood.

I cannot force revelation on someone who prefers darkness.

I can pray,

I can love,

but I cannot make someone desire truth.

Only the Holy Spirit can soften a heart that is willing.

And if they're unwilling,

then I release them.

We are not responsible for opening someone else's eyes.

We are responsible for keeping our eyes open.

The Lord led me to a lot of Scripture for this episode,

but this one I didn't expect.

2 Corinthians 10,

verse 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,

and we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

I realized that that Scripture is not just for when I'm tempted to sin in obvious ways.

It's also for when my thoughts begin drifting into resentment,

bitterness and disappointment.

Into the how could they?

Why would they?

Or even how could I?

Why would I do that? Again,

whether those thoughts were manufactured by me or triggered by someone else's actions,

they still must be brought into obedience to Christ.

Obedience to Christ is forgiveness.

Obedience to Christ is repentance.

Obedience to Christ is loving your neighbor as yourself.

So when hurt rises up,

we can't let it fester.

We must bring it to Him.

Their lack of breakthrough does not have to break me,

and it doesn't have to break you.

If we continuously bring our wounds to Christ,

we remain clean.

If we walk in obedience. When he tells us to let someone or something go,

we prevent repeated injury.

Forgiveness does not mean erasing wisdom.

We can forgive and still erect boundaries.

Grace does not mean enabling sin.

Sometimes grace looks like I forgive you, but I will not allow you to continue sinning against me.

That is not hatred.

That is an integral part of guarding your heart,

which is what the Bible calls us to do.

Guarding your heart doesn't mean you can't love others well.

It means you learn to love others wisely.

Sometimes losing access to you becomes the wake up call.

Someone needs consequences create clarity.

If there are no consequences,

there is no accountability.

If there is no accountability,

there is rarely change.

But here is the freeing part.

Their chosen blindness is between them and God.

You reconcile your thoughts,

you forgive,

you repent for leading instead of following.

You love,

you obey,

and then you release.

Because hope was never in them.

Hope is in Christ.

That is the lesson.

Hope is not in the version of someone we wish existed.

Hope is in the Lord.

And when we truly anchor there,

disappointment loses its power to destroy us,

our dreams and our divine destiny.

It is the difference between letting the Lord lead us and learning to let go or leading ourselves so that we stay in a place that leads to spiritual stagnation instead of spiritual transformation.

We have to look at our choices honestly and ask ourselves,

am I choosing the Lord's will or my own?

Because choosing blindness is not only something that other people do,

sometimes it's something we do too.

And the moment we choose to see clearly,

everything begins to change.

Before I close,

I want to share a song that the Lord placed on my heart earlier this week.

It felt like he downloaded the words into my head and my heart.

Almost immediately, I started to sing a song that my soul already seemed to know.

This song is not just for you,

it's also for me.

Because sometimes the Lord reminds us who we are called to be right when we need it the most.

Speaker B: Sister, rise up,

lift your eyes up.

Your help comes from the Lord.

Sister, rise up,

lift your eyes up.

You're meant for something more.

Nothing that they say or do can stop the plan he has for you.

Sister, rise up,

lift your eyes up.

Your help comes from the Lord.

A new day is dawning.

Can you perceive it? Your old life is over,

but you must believe it.

Your wings are ready.

It's time to take flight,

to fly by faith and not by sight.

A new wind is blowing, it's lifting you higher.

Your light is shining,

it's getting brighter. Your wings are stronger,

you can fly longer.

It's true,

God's beautiful butterfly is you.

There's nothing you can't do when his spirit lives in you.

Speaker A: I pray that that song blessed you as much as it blessed me when the Lord gave it to me earlier this week.

It's not complete,

but then again,

neither are we.

That's what the song is saying.

You're not done because he's not done with you.

There's so much more the Lord wants to do through you and for you we are so much more than what we have endured.

The Lord is calling us all to rise to fly high as his beautiful butterflies.

I love you sister,

but not as much as the Lord loves you.

My prayer is that this episode and song by resonate in your soul long after you've stopped listening.

so it might have been a little rough around the edges.

But I sang it with my heart and I sang it even though I wasn't sure how well it was going to come out because the Lord pressed it on my spirit to do it.

So I obeyed.

If this episode blessed you,

please send it to someone who needs it and follow Born to Be a Butterfly so you never miss an episode.

If you would like to connect with me,

feel free to message me on Born to Be a Butterfly on Instagram or on Facebook.

Until next time.

Remember,

healing is holy.

Transformation is possible.

The Lord can turn your wounds into wings.

You were born to be a butterfly.